The Templar's Code (34 page)

“The Templars, deservedly famed for their religious tolerance, were the only Christian order that maintained strong relations with European Jews and were known to come to their aid during times of duress.” As he spoke, Caedmon reached for another macaroon.

“If there really is a Genesis code encrypted within the pictograph, why didn’t the Knights Templar, you know, take the Emerald Tablet out for a test drive? Or why didn’t Francis Bacon try to
create
something?”

“For the simple reason that neither the Templars nor Sir Francis possessed the encryption key,” Caedmon replied. Then, elaborating, he said, “As with any code or cipher, an encryption key is required in order to correctly decode the hidden message. In cryptography, there is a famous axiom, Kerckhoff’s principle, which states that ‘only secrecy of the key provides security.’ Without the encryption key, the Genesis code can’t be deciphered. Be that as it may, the Emerald Tablet is still a highly desirable relic.”

Edie shot both of them a meaningful glance. “Okay, guys. When do we take the scavenger hunt to the next level?”

“
You
, Edie Miller, are a woman after my own heart.” Placing an arm around her shoulders, Caedmon pulled her close.

Rubin dolefully shook his spiky white head. “I wouldn’t pop the corks just yet. We have no idea where to begin the hunt.”

Caedmon picked up the Mylar-encased frontispiece. “You never did say, Rubin, how you came by this.”

“And with good reason.”

Looking decidedly guilty, their host walked over to the piano, retaking his seat at the upholstered bench. A few moments later, Edie suppressed a smile, recognizing the dirge-like opening to the punk-rock anthem “London Calling.”

Banging out the final note, Rubin removed his hands from the keyboard and turned toward the divan. “Oh, very well. I bought it from a young chit who clearly had no idea as to the engraving’s true value. She sent me an unsolicited e-mail in which she alluded to having something that I might be interested in purchasing.” He mirthlessly cackled. “She’d invented some outlandish story about finding it behind a wall panel at her place of employment.”

“And why, may I ask, was that an ‘outlandish’ claim?” Caedmon stared intently at the antiquarian.

“Well, because of
where
she is employed,” Rubin churlishly retorted. “Good God, the chit works at Craven House.”

“Get out of town! That’s right here in London.”

Turning to her, Caedmon raised a questioning brow. “You’re familiar with this Craven House?”

“Oh, I’ve never been there,” Edie was quick to clarify. “But a few years back I read a Franklin biography. Most people don’t know this, but he lived in London for nearly thirty years. As I recall, Craven House was his last residence in Merry Olde.”

Clearly stunned by the revelation, Caedmon’s eyes opened wide. “As in
Dr. Benjamin Franklin
?”

“None other.”

Craning his neck, Mercurius gazed upon the night sky, dazzled by the glittering array. Like a beacon fire, the stars, the planets, and the celestial bodies beckoned.
The Lost Heaven
. That luminous place that gave birth to the divine spark—the soul—that resided within each living creature. And where each soul yearned to return.

He pulled his robe tighter across his chest as he strolled to the other side of the slate terrace. Through the limbs of his neighbor’s towering oak, Mercurius easily sighted the Orion constellation. The most conspicuous of all the starry configurations, it was known to the ancient Egyptians as Unas. So named for the pharaoh who rose to military greatness by eating the flesh of his mortal enemies. A ghoulish custom that married the Egyptians’ lurid fascination with death to the art of war. “The business of barbarians” as Napoleon so adroitly referred to it.

But the Egyptians were not the first civilization obsessed with warfare.

Before Egypt came to the forefront of the ancient world, there was the mighty Atlantis.
The fabled island of Atlas.
The continent rose to prominence twelve thousand years ago. Even then, its culture, medical arts, and highly advanced technology were legendary. It was this highly advanced technology that enabled the Atlanteans to rule the ancient world with an iron fist.

Plato, in
Timaeus
and
Critias
, wrote at length about the warmongering Atlanteans. Determined to conquer Athens, an unforeseen calamity befell the mighty Atlanteans prior to the final sea battle, their entire continent destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion. In one fiery instant, Atlantis was no more.

The antiquarian Rubin Woolf had been correct in his assertions; there were survivors from Atlantis who made their way to Egypt. Preeminent among them was Thoth, the High Priest. Thoth bequeathed the Emerald Tablet to the Egyptians and instructed them in the sacred knowledge of the universe. He taught the Egyptians about the sacred Light, that limitless well of energy that could be accessed, tapped into, and used for the greater good. But like the Atlanteans before them, the Egyptians abused and corrupted the sacred knowledge, using it to create a vast militaristic empire. Sad-hearted, the wise Thoth realized the evil still lurked, having slithered forth from the smoldering ashes of Atlantis. Fearful of how the sacred knowledge would be exploited after his death, Thoth concealed the Emerald Tablet.

For thousands of years, the Emerald Tablet remained hidden; until an ambitious upstart named Tuthmose discovered the sacred relic hidden inside a temple column at Hermopolis. A high-ranking member of Pharaoh Akhenaton’s court, Tuthmose was an adherent of monotheism, holding firm to the belief that Aten was the
only
god in the heavens. It was this ardent belief in the one god that led Tuthmose to slay the temple priests who still believed in the divine pantheon. It was this ardent belief in the one god that led Tuthmose to command the pharaoh’s armies and crush all dissenters. And it was this same ardent belief that inspired Tuthmose to lead the Egyptian royal court and all of its Hebrew slaves out of Egypt.

To secure and consolidate his power, the ambitious Tuthmose, now called Moses, wielded the Emerald Tablet like a weapon. He further strengthened his dominion by creating a
new
monotheistic religion that heralded Yahweh as the one god. A capricious divinity, Yahweh demanded blind obedience, capable of unimaginable bloodlust if his divine will was thwarted.

Yahweh’s
divine
will would became the basis for Moses’s innumerable laws, violations of which were punishable by death. To record these draconian strictures, Moses invented the Hebrew alphabet. He then wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, to reinforce the laws, and he instituted a hereditary priesthood to safeguard the mystical secrets that enabled his totalitarian rule. Gifts from the patriarch.

But Moses was not content to stop there. The ruthless leader next taught the Hebrews how to kill in the name of the one god. To wage “holy” war. And with the sacred relic in his arsenal, no one could stop Moses.

None did. In fact, the first recorded genocides in history were those of the Old Testament, all committed in the name of the one god, the newly minted Yahweh. One brutal account, in particular, speaks to Moses’s infamy. When the Hebrew army returned from their conquest of Midian, it was not enough that the enemy army had been put to the sword and their entire adult male population slaughtered. Moses, infuriated by this act of “leniency,” commanded his soldiers to kill the adult women, butcher every male child and debauch every virgin girl. Regardless of her age. According to the account in Numbers, thousands of children were raped.

An atrocity like none other. Glorified for time immemorial in the biblical text.

Is it any wonder that the political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli greatly admired the biblical patriarch?

But Mercurius knew, as did Osman de Léon and Moshe Benaroya, that the man immortalized as the patriarch of the three religions of the Book distorted and corrupted the Light, profaned the sanctity of life, and abused the sacred knowledge to further his own megalomaniacal ambitions. And by so doing, Moses unleashed a dark energy that permeates the world still. In the
Luminarium
, Osman and Moshe explained how this dark energy was an ancient curse. One that must be reversed.

Chilled, Mercurius walked to the patio door. Despite the cool temperature, a palpable heaviness hung in the air. As though each airborne molecule had been drenched in a thick syrup. He entered the house and walked down the hallway toward his study. As was his custom, he stopped in front of the row of framed photographs and with respectful silence gazed at each horrific image.

Eyes welling with tears, he lightly rested his forehead on the photograph in the middle.
Auschwitz.
That sadistic death camp where Osman and Moshe drew their last breaths.

Knowing it will happen again. And again . . .

Not only did Moses glorify war, he claimed that those horrific atrocities were sanctioned by God. But that was a lie. A hoax. A cruel deception that perpetuated the evil by wrapping it in hallowed vestments. The so-called holy wars were simply a bloodthirsty exercise of power. No different from the bloodthirsty exercise of power that forced Thoth, the Atlantean High Priest, to use the sacred relic to
create
a single catastrophic burst of energy that destroyed the entire continent of Atlantis.

For the greater good.

“It was the light that led me to the Bacon frontispiece.” As she spoke, the young woman in the farthingale and mop cap nervously eyed Caedmon and Edie.

The Light?
Surely the costumed museum docent wasn’t referring to Aten, the god of radiant light. Or was she?

Caedmon didn’t know what to make of the woman’s enigmatic statement.

He peered over his shoulder, verifying that they still had the first-floor drawing room to themselves, the next tour group due to traipse through a few minutes hence. A living history museum, 36 Craven Street was a popular tourist destination. Benjamin Franklin had resided at the modest Georgian town house in the decades immediately preceding the revolution. As he understood it, the house had fallen into a derelict state and had only recently been resuscitated, having undergone a complete restoration.

Luckily, he and Edie had had no difficulty tracking down “the chit” who’d sold Rubin the frontispiece. The introductions had been simple and straightforward:
Miss Beatrice Stanley, I’m Chief Inspector Peter Willoughby-Jones, Metropolitan Police. This is Special Agent Elizabeth Ross, my counterpart at the FBI. We have a few questions regarding a recent transaction that you made with one Rubin Woolf.

At hearing that, the slack-jawed docent in the farthingale had immediately capitulated, no doubt terrified that she would be arrested on the spot and hauled to the jail in handcuffs.

The heavy artillery unlimbered, the interrogation had proceeded in a straightforward manner. Now they were in the process of establishing how precisely Miss Stanley came to be in possession of the Francis Bacon frontispiece.

“The Light?” Edie parroted, her thoughts running a parallel course. “Do you mean to say that it was divine inspiration that—”

“Are you daft? I mean the
light!
” Having unexpectedly turned belligerent, the docent gestured to the bank of floor to ceiling windows that lined one wall of the first-floor drawing room. Although gray storm clouds cast a dismal hue, daylight flooded the empty room. “I was leading a tour group through the drawing room when an obnoxious Yank, who claimed he was a restoration expert, pointed out that because of the way the sunlight was streaming through the windows, he could see that the dado railing had slightly buckled away from the wall. I commended the fat bastard for his keen eye and promised him that I would report the defect to the appropriate personnel.”